


The Coven of the Sacred Cocktail Hour

by speakpirate



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 22:00:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5760472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakpirate/pseuds/speakpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emily considers her old friends through the lens of her years spent tending bar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Coven of the Sacred Cocktail Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the 6B premiere.

When Hanna hugs her, she smells like straight vodka, she’s not even mixing. Masked by a fruity kind of gum, but still. Emily’s been tending bar long enough to take in the whiff of top shelf, on the rocks, exactly right for a former Homecoming Queen who spends half her life in first class.

Emily looks at her friend and sees the kind of drinker who applies the liquor like make up, a new brand of concealer, one more product in the routine to hide those little worry lines around the eyes. 

It’s been five years since high school, since the days of constantly staging interventions, the eagle-eyed friends always quick to ask if everything is okay. There’s a kind of nostalgia attached to the thought, forcing her to remember a time when they still believed everything could be okay.

“Are you still traveling all the time?” Emily asks as they pose for selfies.

“Home is where you set your luggage down,” Hanna replies. 

Later, in the room, Emily sees that Hanna has a gorgeous cream colored five piece luggage set. It’s the luggage of someone who doesn’t give a single thought to baggage fees, who flies on private jets and goes to parties in Dubai. Who always stays in motion, doesn’t ever stop long enough for the old demons to catch up. Hanna’s demons have to travel coach. Or cargo.

Once the Coven of the Sacred Cocktail Hour enters its second hour, after Hanna starts talking about Electroshock Margaritas again, Emily lets her mind wander to what she’d put in a drink like that - an artisanal cocktail to commemorate the old Radley. She thinks it would be better as a martini. She’d add a shot of absinthe to the gin and vermouth, to give it a kick, and a green science experiment tinge. With a lightning bolt skewer for the olives.

“I tended bar for awhile, when I was an undergrad,” she hears herself saying. “I could have them mix you something like that.” She feels a little thrill at the base of her neck, a tiny adrenaline spike from lying for lyings sake. She has a split second of wondering if this is what it used to feel like for Ali, then shuts that thought down, like flipping a light switch. That’s the only thing to do with thoughts about Alison anymore. Throw them into a dark room and lock the door.

“Go ahead, Em,” Hanna waves a hand encouragingly. “Order me something extra special.”

Emily studies the bottles from the wrong side of the bar, decides she doesn’t like the Radley theme after all. She orders Hanna a drink that combines vodka, peach schnapps, Grand Marnier, and a splash of Sprite. She sips it to taste, and it’s perfect - bold and sweet over crushed ice.

“Here,” she says to Hanna, handing her the glass. “Your signature Rosewood cocktail. I’m calling it Bitch Can See.”

“Ooooh, do me next!” Spencer demands. 

Emily looks at her, consideringly. She’s seen Spencer’s kind of drunk too many times to count, the way tightly wound girls get when they let themselves flirt with being sloppy. The girls who down their drinks fast, like drunk is a destination and they’re racing to get there. Who slam their glasses down on the bar and make stupid “Wooo-hoo!” noises when they’re finished. 

She thinks of how the third drink had Spencer slurring a little and declaring her love for all their faces. She recognizes the signs, the moment after the fourth drink, before the fifth is served - this is when the buttoned up girls turn the corner into uninhibited, the point where they’ll start kissing strangers, girls, sometimes Emily. She doesn’t mind. It usually leads to a big tip, sometimes a phone number. She never calls, but if the girl has the right shade of honey blonde hair, the right curve to her hips, she might take her home for the night.

“Alright,” Emily shrugs, heading back to the bar. 

She orders a drink with a watermelon schapps base, triple sec, silver tequila, and vodka, with a little club soda and layer of Curacao on top. It has a nice red to blue layer to it, and enough alcohol that anyone other than Spencer would be ready to tear off their shirt and dance topless on the bar after a few sips.

Spencer grins. “Pretty,” she says, her fingers brushing Emily’s as she takes the glass from her hand. She wraps an arm around Emily’s waist, pulling her into an awkward side hug that forces her to perch on the arm of Spencer’s chair.

Emily looks at Spencer, who’s gulping her drink and resting a hand on Emily’s thigh. Emily imagines excusing herself to go to the restroom, feels sure Spencer would follow. She thinks of how many times she’s made out with drunk girls in bathrooms over the past three years. Her eyes trace the familiar lines of Spencer’s face, the nose that looks ever so slightly like Jason’s. Then, like a double jump in a game of checkers, she flashes to how Jason and Ali have the same chin. 

“What’s this called?” Spencer asks, leaning against her, the hand on her thigh creeping upward. 

Emily stands up, moves back to the couch next to Hanna. “Diplomatic Immunity,” she replies.

She thinks about telling the truth, imagines her tongue forming the words, “I actually didn’t finish school. I’m not at the Salk Institute. My dad died and -” her mind stops there, getting stuck in the groove of thought around her father. Even after all this time, the thought still hasn’t lost its sting. Her dad is dead, and Charlotte DiLaurentis is alive. Charlotte DiLaurentis is going to sleep in a soft bed tonight, and eat chocolate chip cookies, and scrub her face with hot water - and her dad is cold and still and rotting underground. 

She closes her eyes and remembers the night of the funeral. Her mom going through the day steely eyed, like she was storming the battlements of burying her husband, then weeping on her knees in the kitchen afterward, so upset she actually agreed to take a Valium when Ashley Marin offered it to her. Hanna was in Ibiza for the collection, she couldn’t make it back to Rosewood in time. Spencer had an econ final that she couldn’t miss at Georgetown. Aria came, pale and tiny in her black wrap dress. And Paige flew out from California, even though Emily hadn’t asked her to, even though she really didn’t have any emotion to spare right now. 

“I can stay, if you want?” Paige had said tentatively, a hand wrapped around Emily’s arm. Emily looked at her through a thick fog of numbness, a place so beyond regular pain that she felt like Paige was from another planet, speaking a language she couldn’t totally understand.

It was Aria who’d put a hand gently on Paige’s shoulder, thrown Emily a sympathetic glance and suggested maybe Emily needed some time alone to process. And Emily felt so relieved, so grateful, it seemed dangerously close to actual happiness. She’d felt herself crumpling at the thought, surrounded by the silent pans of casserole and jello molds and plates of brownies.

It was five minutes after she heard Aria and Paige close the front door, when it opened again and Alison walked in without knocking. She was carrying a pan of lasagna and a bottle of Eagle Rare Bourbon. She set the pan down on top of the stove, then wordlessly took Emily and the bottle upstairs. 

Three days later, Emily flew back to California with three of her dad’s old army t-shirts and his camo jacket in her bag. She burned the dress she wore to the funeral. She stopped waking up for her early classes, then gave up on the afternoon ones, too. She ignored twenty seven calls from Alison DiLaurentis before Ali finally took the hint and went radio silent.

Here in the confines of the Radley bar, she closes her eyes and swallows the remains of her own drink. It’s rye whiskey and Coke, nothing imaginative but it gets the job done. Emily enjoys the burn in the back of her throat, the heat that spreads in her chest afterward.

She opens her eyes and sees Aria looking at her thoughtfully, while Hanna and Spencer compare notes about wedding venues in Rome.

Aria is drinking more than she’s talking. She’s so tiny, she’s never had to drink more than two to get giggly before. Now she’s still nursing her third, and so far there are no giggles but a lot of brooding. Emily has seen her fair share of broody drinkers, the ones who live on their particular bar stools, ordering fourth and fifth rounds with a motion of their hands. They’re the ones with stories they either want to tell or want to forget, trying to drown their hard luck in hard liquor. 

Emily grabs her empty glass and Aria’s, heads back up to the bar.

She orders Aria a modified whiskey sour with coconut rum and melon liquor, enough sour mix to make her lips pucker after the first sip. 

“What is this, exactly?” Aria asks.

Emily resists the urge to laugh, knowing it would sound more like a fake cough than honest humor. “It’s special,” Emily tells her. “I call it Face the Truth.”


End file.
